Japan is falling into this dark abyss. Population collapse, Fukushima continuing to pollute everything, volcanoes erupting, more earthquakes, blizzards and of course, continuing economic collapse. The way Japan had to be dragged kicking and screaming to begin fixing the defective air bags in cars is just one symptom of a dying entity. Japan is going bankrupt. Fitch places Japan credit on Rating Watch Negative which means that Abe’s LDP on track for landslide victory: a very low turnout to vote is expected as most Japanese have pretty much thrown in the towel and given up.

“This is an election without choice,” said Tomoaki Iwai, political science professor at Nihon University, adding that voter turnout may be even lower than than the record low hit in the 2012 election that brought Abe and the LDP back to power.

In recent years, new discoveries have confirmed that military leaders deliberately tried to delay the delivery of Japan’s final memorandum to the U.S., thus confusing the embassy in Washington. After the war, experts felt strongly inclined to blame the delay on embassy staff.

In 2013, professor Munehiro Miwa, a director at Kyushu University’s Manuscript Library, discovered a document in the Japanese National Archives that sheds light on questionable moves by military elements at the postwar International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
Dec. 7 has never been an ordinary day for Takeo Iguchi. On that day 73 years ago, when Imperial Japanese Navy warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor, he was in Washington, the 11-year-old son of Sadao Iguchi, counselor at the Japanese Embassy there.

Takeo Iguchi, himself a former ambassador to New Zealand and a professor emeritus at Shobi University, has devoted his research to reversing a prevalent view in Japan that it was due to the embassy’s neglect that Japan’s final memorandum was handed to U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull at 2:20 p.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, Washington time — one hour after the start of the attack — and thus giving Japan the disgrace of launching a “sneak attack.”

EVERYONE running Japan back then, everyone who were in charge of Japan, wanted to do sneak attacks all the time and didn’t just do it to the US but everyone. They would issue an excuse right after moving military forwards and killing people. The US now imitates this sort of war crime which is why Bush and now Obama should both be arrested and tried by the ICC.

The concluding paragraph of the draft reads: “The government of the United States of America has not shown even the slightest degree of sincerity in the current negotiations, and the Japanese government regrets to have to solemnly notify hereby your government that we are forced to terminate negotiations, recognizing that continuation of talks will in no way contribute to the stability of East Asia, and that you will be held responsible for any and all the consequences that may arise in the future.”

But in the memorandum Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura and special envoy Saburo Kurusu delivered to Hull, the last paragraph was changed to: “The Japanese government regrets to have to notify hereby the American government that in view of the attitude of the American government, it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations.”

Iguchi said the change turned the final memorandum into something that was not an ultimatum, fueling anger that Japan carried out a “treacherous attack,” as termed by the U.S.

Japan is our very special ally like Israel. And just as disgustingly horrible when it comes to diplomacy. ALL negotiations with Japan tend to be slow, painful and often, useless. The Japanese don’t concede one point for the US, ever. It is highly unfriendly negotiations.

Jolie’s film is based on the life story of American Olympic runner and US Air Force second lieutenant Louis Zamperini, as told in Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption. Zamperini, played by Jack O’Connell, was beaten and mistreated by the Japanese navy between July 1943 and the end of the war in August 1945 after being captured near the Marshall Islands following the downing of the B-24 bomber he had been helping to crew and a harrowing 47 days at sea.

The Japanese right wing is furious and is causing diplomatic havoc over this movie. They don’t want any reminders of their cruel, inhuman, deadly rule which didn’t just butcher millions of people abroad but also killed a huge hunk of Japanese people, too.

Even as nuclear bombs (another issue here about war crimes by the US) rained upon Japan, the military right wingers refused to surrender and only after a handful of diplomats reached the goofball, inept Emperor, did the war end suddenly.

In 1972 my great uncle sat down and wrote an 80 pg. handwritten personal history of his time in World War II as a prisoner of war of the Japanese. From May of 1942 until August 15th of 1945, 1200 days as a POW, he survived one day at a time. He surrendered with his group on the island of Corregidor, and spent time in Bilibid prison, Cabanatuan, Palawan, and a journey to Japan on the horrible Oyoku Maru near the end of the war. Uncle Bob was a true American hero.

A few years ago my father James Blair Russell and myself created this video with photos and clips we collected, and dad narrated. This is part two of two.

The CIA is now the KGB. As we see blacks protesting police powers while crime rages in our inner city slums, we have a CIA that is a police state power which massively and totally illegally tortures, murders, kidnaps, funds violent coups, provokes illegal wars, assassinates and steals stuff as well as spying on everyone.

All of this is illegal. All of this is under the rules of the ICC, grounds for arresting the heads of the CIA, the Senate and House, our Presidents…and so forth exactly like the Nazis had to go through. The worst part here is, even as editorials denounce the ‘stain’ of torture, none are calling for all the Bush people like Cheney or all the Obama staff, including him, to be arrested!

And this is ridiculous but then, no bankers were ever arrested after destroying the economy, either.

This woman is insane. She declares the whole civil rights movement a failure. She declares the jury system a failure (it isn’t , I sat a murder trial…the system still works) because blind justice did not deliver verdicts she wanted.

You see it is angry people like this woman, writing irrational screeds that is playing right into the elites hands.

It will be people like her the elites will use to destroy the jury by peers that our forefathers fought so hard to gain from royals.

In higher end clothing stores EVERYONE is ambushed by over friendly sales clerks. EVERYONE. It isn’t a racial profiling thing. The stores train their staff to be overly obsequious.

Yeah, I’ve been mistaken for a sales clerk. I’ve mistaken other shoppers (of various races) for being sales clerks. It is no reason to get up on a high horse about it and beat the race war drums for it.

You know what the writer ignores? The mild slur her black friends sling at her over her clothing style. Why should she have to justify the clothing she wants to wear? Instead she channels her anger at the slur into a white vs. black racism story, not the black vs. black culture war it truly is.

“Fitch places Japan credit on Rating Watch Negative” Does ANYONE give any credibility to ratings agencies like Fitch anymore? Why would they? After the crud these guys rated AAA before 2008, do their current views mean ANYTHING? After covering up mortgage fraud by pasting these mortgage bundles as AAA when they were really below junk bond status, who cares what ratings agencies like Fitch think? I mean, I don’t doubt that Japan’s credit rating is bad; this only means that Fitch doesn’t lie like a rug ALL the time.

Actually, trial by jury had been around in one form or another since 829, when Louis the Pious invented the Frankish inquest. By the 1780s, the jury was an ingrained part of the English legal system.

The idea that 1791 was some watershed in the course of human rights is pure myth. Pretty much all of the protections provided in the Bill of Rights already existed at common law in one form or another. The American Revolution wasn’t so much about human rights as business: the Yanks wanted to be in business for themselves.

Now, there were some real changes between 1865-1868, with equal protection and all that, although enforcement of human rights laws can be a sketchy proposition even here in the so-called “land of the free.” And there are apparently no shortage of Americans that want to roll back to 1791 and be rid of even those often flimsy protections, for some reason.

Canadian banks recently warned falling oil prices would affect their business but failed to note that banks are heavily invested in junk bonds and derivatives from oil speculation and bailout cash. When oil hits $40 Canada will be toast, banks, Govs and citizens alike.

Russia apparently removed first strike from their published doctrine likely because Putin knows tactical nukes will certainly be used against Russia and their strategic response will be devastating so they don’t need first strike.

There’ll be no demonstrations regarding CIA revelations because the tortured are “others” and have no human rights.

And one irony is that with WWI (The War of Anti-Independence) the British Empire practically reconquered the colonies. While obviously not “ruled” in the pre-revolution sense the U.S. merged back into the Empire for all intents and purposes.

And American dissenters (patriotic pro-independence people, many of whom were descendants of Irish potato famine refugees or German immigrants) in WWI were ruthlessly crushed.